The Easiest Way To Retire Early

According to, oh, EVERYONE ON THE INTERNET, (except this guy) your ultimate goal should be to retire early. I have compiled a list of things that early retirement is better than:

1. Blowjobs

2. Puppies/kittens

3. Game 7, Stanley Cup Finals

4. Taylor Swift

5. Potato chips

6. Blowjobs, again

7. My stubble beard

8. Slutty Halloween costumes

9. Meth

10. The Hardy Boys (What? Those books were fun)

So, yeah. Needless to say early retirement is pretty awesome.

Getting there, though, it’s kinda difficult. Providing you start early, you’re gonna need at least 20 years before you’re really ready to retire – and that’s assuming you do everything right. You can’t screw up on your investments, losing money isn’t going to get you to retirement. You have to make decent money and live cheaply too, because you need to create a huge savings rate. How else do you expect to get all the capital you’ll need for your days of golf and incontinence?

But you know, all that stuff is hard. It takes a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice to make all these early retirement dreams possible. Which is why most people don’t even bother anymore. Say what?! Nelson, are you talking crazy?

No stupid, it turns out you don’t even have to retire to retire anymore. You can keep working part time, or even full time, as long as you can quit anytime you want. You can blog for a living and still call it retired, and even still call it passive income. Because when I think passive income, I think of something that requires constant care or else it will wither and die. Don’t you? Of course you do.

Or, if you’re so inclined, you can just stay at home all day while your spouse works. We used to call that being a stay at home mom (or dad) but apparently now we call that retired. Look for their next project, where somebody starts a blog called Retired at Work, where they claim they’re retired because their boss is in the other room and totally doesn’t know they’re blogging.

Note to self, buy that domain name. (I just checked. It’s available!)

So anyway, I guess it’s pretty safe to say we’ve butchered the definition of retirement. Did I say butchered? I meant changed, and for the better, obviously. Everybody should be able to be retired, career and financial situation be damned. It’s like socialism, but different because nobody wants to actually do anything. Actually, that’s pretty much exactly like socialism. Never mind.

Anyway, you don’t care about any of that. You want to retire, and you want to do it now, dammit. I like it, and I like your casual swearing. It’s easy. All you need to do to retire early is suckle at the teat of the government.

In Alberta, we have a program called Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped. (AISH) Thanks to recent increases in the program, a single person can count on $1588 per month, thanks to the Alberta Government. Sure, it’s not a whole lot, but you could live on that much if you tried. You’re also allowed to make up to $800 per month extra without your AISH payments being clawed back, so you could blog a little and make $2388 per month. That’s over $28k per year. Boom, you’re retired.

Sure, once a year they take a look at your bank account to make sure you’re not making more than what you say. That’s okay though, since you know in advance which month it’s going to be. Besides, they don’t need to know about your Paypal account, now do they?

Don’t live in Alberta? No problem. Both B.C. and Ontario have similar programs, and I’m sure other provinces do too. Especially Quebec, which is pretty much a socialist paradise. And if it’s not offered in your province? Start movin’, sparky. Don’t let geography stand between you and your dreams of early retirement.

The deal gets better too. You get free prescriptions, free basic dental care, along with discounted transit passes and even free glasses, which SCIENCE! has proven make girls hotter. (Or maybe I have a glasses fetish. Either or.) Combine that with Canada’s free health care and other social programs that’ll further supplement your income, and this early retirement sounds pretty sweet.

There’s just one problem. You’re gonna have to fake a disability.

This author, while never faking a disability himself, does have a few tips on faking yours. Physical ones are harder to fake, since doctors will keep bugging you for things like x-rays and MRIs, which could blow the whistle on our whole operation. Don’t do that. Besides, you might forget which leg is supposed to be hurt, and nothing’s more embarrassing than limping on the wrong leg. Well, maybe pissing yourself. HEY YOU SHOULD DO THAT. DISABLED PEOPLE TOTALLY PISS THEMSELVES ALL THE TIME.

Instead, fake being crazy. It’s much easier. Have you ever heard of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? That disease is an early retiree’s wet dream. You can totally fake all the symptoms. There’s no test that can disprove you have it. Just show up at the doctor’s office enough times and he’ll proclaim you have it just so he doesn’t have deal with your tired ass anymore.

That’s how easy it is. Just get yourself a disability, get approved for the program, and boom, you’re retired. Because if we can expand the definition of retirement to include people who still work part time and people who run their own online businesses, why can’t we include people who steal off the government?

10 Comments

We don’t have disability — we have “disability pensions” that are just your retirement pensions (my mom gets a bit over $12k a year). We have horrible social benefits for old people because a) “poor people” don’t pay tax b) a lot of people are on welfare c) our money is going to construction (aka, corruption), language police and subsidized everything

I’m not sure if I agree with your list of priorities. I personally prefer No 1 on your list far over retirement. What would the point of retiring be without that being a big part of it? Daily for sure.
If I had the choice I would continue working and that could be a percentage of my compensation. I may even work longer and harder. If you don’t agree then you may need to discuss the technique of your significant others.

I agree with you fully about your views on the “semi-retirerds”/ “role reversal” blogger’s. I voiced my opinions on their site’s as well. Usually there are about 10 congratulatory posts on how wonderful it is to retire at such a young age. Then there is me… always the bad guy. Some say I should be on a debate team. But when one is not fully retired only on traditional retirement proceeds (savings, MF’s, Dividends, rental property, maybe a business you built and stepped back from etc.) it’s not really “retirement”. Don’t make it sound like it is, and I would even say it’s misleading to call it that. There is NO BOAT, no people dressed in white, it’s just not right. It does not look like my MF prospectus.

Disability is the new welfare. And getting a Dr’s note for a vague mental illness is even easier than scamming a needs-based assessment. Welcome to Canada’s 50%: the folks who pay no taxes and demand ever-greater entitlements.